CHAPTER 1 DRIVEN BY VALUE TRUST AND CONFIDENCE BUILDING: A VALUE-DRIVEN MECHANISM A turnaround must operate as a disruptive process from the com- pany’s previous history, otherwise it merely painfully prolongs the past. A new CEO consciously embodies this challenge and this is refl ected in the system of values that he or she brings to the new mission. The question is not how these values are formulated, but how the CEO intends to use them. This is the kick-off of the confi dence-COPYRIGHTED and trust-building process. TheMATERIAL style of the new CEO determines how enthusiasm and passion for the recovery process are ignited. Salespeople say that you only have one opportunity to make a good fi rst impression; the CEO’s challenge is the same. In SN Brussels Airlines’ case there were three aspects to enforcing the new set of values: how to be transparent with these 6 DRIVEN BY VALUE values in opening up part of one’s private thoughts; how some disruptive behaviours prolong the initial momentum; and fi nally, how the impact of the values can be perpetuated. TRUST COMES WITH TRUTH Back in summer 2002, Peter Davies faced a very straightforward issue: how to bring together all the inherited talents of SN to achieve the initial simple goal of survival. But you can’t just decide to foster energy or talent, this is a consequence of a trust-building mechanism. The birth of the company mobilized some substantial resources among the Belgian fi nancial community. In simple terms, SN’s cash in February 2002 amounted to €140 million. The rate at which the company was burning cash didn’t offer it a very long lifespan without encountering some crucial diffi culties, unless it was able to regain a self-supporting level of operations quickly. Incidentally, the Swiss International Airlines story illustrates precisely the realization of this risk. Moritz Suter, the founder of Crossair (see www.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crossair), very clearly explained the nature of this narrow path for survival when he said: They (SN) began modestly based on reality and true market needs. While they built up operations and made a profi t, Swiss annihilated €2,5 billion and was bought by Lufthansa. I am pleased that deci- sions in Belgium are taken more intelligently. Air France’s Director General, Patrick Alexandre, echoed virtually the same opinion: SN Brussels did something radically different from SABENA in terms of ambitions. In fact they managed their risk appropriately, while Swiss replicated Swissair’s ambitions and its failing model, with just a difference in scale. OUT OF THE ASHES 7 Peter Davies, whom I had known since his DHL days, invited me in July 2002 to help him design the fi rst management conference that he was planning for early September, and to contribute as outside guest speaker and moderator. One of the goals for this fi rst large-scale management development event was to instil a strong sense of urgency in the team, whatever encouraging signals had been received so far – for instance code share agreements, or the withdrawal of some opportunistic newcomers on routes his- torically operated by SN such as Newcastle or Bologna. This does not contradict Sébastien Bazin’s observation on page 2 about how fast you need to share the tempo of the mission; Peter’s case was slightly different. He had to share the shoes of Rob Kurjpers, the Executive Chairman who had launched the process a couple of months earlier. He therefore inherited a context whose tempo was already partly set. In this situation, his sleight of hand paradoxically consisted in the smoothness with which he took the baton, so that the company only perceived the boost in the turnaround programme due Being new is an to his arrival. advantage: it means Secondly, Peter had always you enjoy the benefi t expressed sincere compassion of the doubt, which over what his new team had can be signifi cant. experienced through the bank- ruptcy. So he did not hide the fact that the relaunch deserved some genuine respect. He said that one of his missions, as newly appointed CEO, was ‘to tick the box of how to transform this bankruptcy trauma into a winning collective dynamic’. In attempt- ing this goal, he had the advantage of being a company outsider, someone who was neither from Belgium nor from SABENA. He was not linked to the past nor to the decisions that had led to the company’s fatal decline. But simultaneously, given that Peter had not hired the current staff, there was no natural reason for them to trust him on the journey back to prosperity. 8 DRIVEN BY VALUE In this context, it is wise to bear in mind that realistically one must count on the benefi t of the doubt and no more. Nationality is not a determining factor in success or failure. The key is results. In Belgium, like in any other country, business results – progress – can obviously be quantifi ed. Numbers are universal and have the same value. Changing a company happens from the inside if the CEO can clearly explain what is needed and the desired outcome. For the fi rst management conference the question was which theme to start with. Peter and I strongly believed that although SN Brussels Airlines was in the airline sector, it was just a business like any other. If we had been in another sector in the same context, we would have tried to start exactly in the same way; that is, on the correct foot. Good practice is correlated to the level of margin in one’s own sector. If we were in the automotive industry, higher margins would correspond to the lowest level of defects per vehicle; Toyota is a good illustration of this principle. In an airline, higher margins have always correlated with punctuality. So there we had a theme for the management conference: punctuality. By chance this was neither fi ction nor a gimmick: since its relaunch SN Brussels Airlines had ranked in the top two in Europe in terms of punctuality. So the theme of the conference became: ‘Invent a corporate tempo to be the most punctual and the most profi table’. The rationale was, in order for it to be observable by the passengers: • First, punctuality must be verifi ed by a tangible and unques- tionable fact, such as a ranking achieved by an independent body. • Secondly, the passenger’s perception is also infl uenced by the attitude to punctuality and the practices followed throughout the organization, down to the smallest detail of operations. OUT OF THE ASHES 9 Summer 2002’s results were very encouraging in terms of ranking, but this did not mean that they refl ected a superior level of orga- nizational effectiveness, which would have been quite unrealistic less than one year after bankruptcy. Realistically, the low traffi c in Brussels airport after SABENA’s crash substantially explained the results. But the results were still good news. Being able to harness the energy created by good news is a characteristic of a successful turnaround manager. Therefore Peter’s challenge was very basic: since SN had achieved this level of performance, it could not be wasted and collectively this coveted advantage must be capitalized on. A good theme was part of the challenge of bringing everyone together, but it was not enough. To counter people’s natural scepticism, Peter thought that it was important to explain what the common challenge was with something quite personal, such as an icebreaker. His idea was to share with his management team of 40 senior managers some lessons from his great uncle, who, he said, infl uenced the way he manages his life. (See Business story 1.1.) Business story 1.1: A mirror for being at ease with oneself My great uncle was in the SAS in France and Belgium during World War II. Very early on, he infl uenced the way I should design my life, my career. One of his most salient lessons regarded these who must live with compromises and these who have chosen not to. Many times in his farm in South Devon he hammered into me, if you want to make your living in politics, you need to be ready to be commanded by hypocrisy with compromises . I think that he had some unpleasant experiences in this respect. But due to his senior offi cer reserve, I could never dig further. 10 DRIVEN BY VALUE Growing up, I understood that the priority was not the superior nature of the drivers you have chosen for your life, but your consciousness of them, how you live with them. So, I came very early on to the conclusion that the less conscious you are of them, the more energy is wasted in developing justifi cations. The reason is simple. You are lying to yourself! The paroxysm of waste or ineffi ciency is reached when you know that these justifi cations are wrong. This raises a crucial question: are you conscious of what you are doing? This also means, aren’t you lying to yourself? This inevitably leads to lying to your collaborators, your customers, your shareholders. It is what I want to tell people fi rst: a turnaround starts by not lying to oneself. We are all in the same boat, relying on each other’s honesty, the commitment of the person next to us. But I also have the antidote. The best repellent I have dis- covered to protect truth is a simple tool: a mirror.